79019 Corporate Environmental Responsibility

As a field of study, environmental law deals with the rules, relationships, systems and processes by which environmental protection is achieved. The process of environmental protection or sustainability involves multiple stakeholders of which corporations are but one. Corporate environmental responsibility focuses on the role that corporations can play in environmental protection and the responsibilities that are now attaching to corporations to encourage sound environmental practice.

This subject examines environmental law issues as they relate to corporations focusing at the national and state levels but looking at comparative examples where appropriate, for example the Norwegian experience, which has similar laws to Australia on mandatory corporate reporting.

Topics areas covered in the subject include:

• international environmental law as it relates to multinational corporations
• the concept of ecologically sustainable development and the application of the precautionary principle and the principle of intergenerational equity
• criminal and civil liability of directors and corporate officers
• managing risk
• drivers of corporate social responsibility, examining issues of corporate disclosure, and reporting and socially responsible investment
• corporate case studies in areas chosen from natural resources management, water or waste management, or pollution
• regulatory and non-regulatory methods of enforcement and responsibility such as environmental audits, due diligence, taxes and tradeable permits
• the role of corporations in climate change and greenhouse gas emission reduction.